"I see the Universe as an infinite number of patterns that whirl and dance around a Still Center. I imitate the celestial circular motions and partake in a timeless cosmic dance. I experience reality as order around a center. I dance to find my centered still point. My dance gives meaning to life."
Jena Marcovicci
Jena Marcovicci was a messenger in the search for a new metaphor.
This personal affirmation was extracted from his book The Dance of Tennis.
Jena Marcovicci was a tennis player. He was a child of the West and a student of the East. During his lifetime (1945 2007) Marcovicci observed millions of tennis balls in flight. The tennis court was his laboratory of life. It was on the court Jena discovered, explored, and applied the universal truths of life.
We all need such a laboratory.
When used as a personal affirmation, I find this imagery allows me to perceive my self and my Universe in a contemporary metaphorical container that is in harmony with both my interior experience of life and my 21st Century scientific worldview.
I see the Universe as an infinite number of patterns that whirl and dance around a Still Center.
When I get a little down, when I get depressed, when I feel sorry for myself, when life is overwhelming, I always do the same thing, and it fixes my state of being every time: I move. More specifically, I move my body. I run. I bike. I swim. I hike. I hit tennis balls. I move my body. There is something inherently re-connective about movement; particularly movement of the body. It is necessarily personal; no one else can move my body, only me. I am most re-created when, in the midst of my movement, I allow my attention to fall upon that Still Center which does not move; that which, some might say, does not exist. While this center, which does not exist, is contentless, it is the One Reality around which all that happens happens! It is this Reality, this Still Center, that re-creates all things; and me too!
This Still Center has been deep in the metaphorical consciousness of humanity since the Yin/Yang of the Tao; since Copernicus articulated the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs in 1543; since Rutherford and Bohr described the motion of electrons around the nucleus of an atom; and since 1953 when Crick and Watson described the spiral structure which encompasses the functioning of a DNA molecule. This metaphor is in harmony with contemporary science as well as my interior experience of life; at the same time it delivers me to a center of Absolute Mystery.
I imitate the celestial circular motions and partake in a timeless cosmic dance.
When my mind, my body, my feelings, my action, and my environment all become entangled in one another in one big Flow, time disappears. Or maybe it is my consciousness of time that disappears, but, whatever the case, it is gone! I enter a state of timelessness where I am connected with All That Is and a Bigger Reality that has no beginning or end.
I experience reality as order around a center.
Order can organize itself around just about any center. Yet, there is only one center that first and finally is trustworthy; it is the Still Center that delivers my consciousness over to awe in the encounter with its no-thing-ness, its content-less-ness, its unchanging truth. This center delivers me not to some thing or some body but to Absolute Mystery; and, it is this Reality alone that I can trust and that delivers me to my essential truth.
When humanity has been healthy and vibrant, this organizing center has always been a still center. When we have been unhealthy, we have found our order and designed our dance around a human-centered reality. Such a reality of human origin and human invention fundamentally leaves us lost, disoriented, and subject to our worst nature.
There is but one order around which all else is properly oriented.
I dance to find my centered still point.
What is your dance
Where is your laboratory Where is your tennis court Where is your volleyball court......running track........swimming pool........chess board........ basketball court........sewing room........garden........board room........ kitchen ..... classroom........where is it Where is the laboratory in which you dance your dance; where time disappears Where is the place that allows you to find your centered Still Point and Flow with the reality that is Reality.
My dance gives meaning to life.
I have looked for meaning in lots of places in my lifemostly in things or relationships I thought I could possess or consume: houses, cars, clothing, food, money, roles, relationships, health, etc. It is a little offensive to think that meaning in life may be located in something I cannot possess, but can only do. When I stop doing it, I no longer possess it. I cannot possess the dance, I can only dance the dance, and when I stop, there is no dance. In truth, this dance is not something I possess but a Reality that possesses me; but only if I surrender to its timeless flow.
I have mistakenly sought meaning somewhere other than the specific details of my real everyday life, somewhere other than right here and right now. I always wanted the meaning to life to be somewhere out there. Out there was somehow more believable, more trustworthy. For me it has been a long slow journey to grasp the truth that such meaning is not out there, that what I am looking for to give meaning to life is not coming. And, in the not coming I am delivered into a meaningful life; I am delivered back to the dance that is my time in the here and the now.
So my dance gives meaning to life.
You dont need to like the fact that the search for a new metaphor is breaking out all around us. I dont particularly like it. In fact, I have spent most of my life hoping it wasnt true and resisting its promise. I was fine with the old metaphor. We can each hide from and escape and ignore and deny this quest. But, if you or I choose to simply fight, escape, ignore, and deny this emergence we will finally encounter only the reality that there is no escape. The search is already taking place all around us. You and I get to decide if we are going to participate and give shape to this great quest or if we are going to quickly become irrelevant. Are we going to assist in co-creating the future as it is being delivered to us or are we going to claim a legacy of irrelevance as we futilely hold to something that is already gone The Supporting Myth, in all of its manifestations, no longer does for us solitarily, collectively, or globally what a good metaphor must finally do: re-deliver us back and connect us with the Still Point, back into the heart of Absolute Mystery at the center of existence.
The writings of Gene Marshall announce the radical nature of our moment in history. The old vertical metaphor of transcendence and a 2-story cosmos which has oriented humanity for at least the past 25,000 years is now obsolete. We live in the midst of the emergence of a new metaphor of transparency which is horizontal in its perspective of One Reality. That which is contentless, infinite, and timeless is now transparently seeping through all of the content-filled, finite elements of our moment in time. All we have to do is choose to see.
The tennis balls are flying.
I see the Universe as an infinite number of patterns that whirl and dance around a Still Center.
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